NOTE: This is just the type of post that would have earned me an email from Dan Olmsted, "Kimbo, you add the right touch at the right time, thank you..." or something kind and reassuring like that. Goodness I miss him. His memorial is tomorrow in Falls Church, Virginia.

2:00pm at Fairfax Memorial Funeral Home

9902 Braddock RoadFairfax, VAUS22032

Readers are invited.

By Kim Rossi Stagliano

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

This is how we Rossis (Staglianos) roll. When I lived with my parents in 2005 - long story, really, you should read about it (insert eye roll) Bella made this fabulous Leprechaun hat with beard. So, we donned it, laughed our McArse's off and took photos. Mom, Dad (2 weeks gone this week at 94, his mother was a Sullivan) the girls and me.

My family was always blessed with laughter - we make jokes, tease each other, find joy in the simplest things and smile even when there's a potato famine and the Guinness has run out. Laughter = love.

Today - St. Patrick's Day - was my Dad's sister's b-day. She'd have been 98 I believe. She lived past 90. She met my girls when she was 88 or so and just "got them." Auntie Gert (nee Asunta Rossi) lost a son to violent crime, my handsome cousin Stephen. She knew what it felt like to have a child wounded, hurt, a Mother's pain. She got me. I loved her very much. My girls went to her 90th birthday party. No one in the Rossi family batted an eye - they offered a helping hand. All of them. That's family. Some are blood. Some are not. Some are gold. Others are pyrite - shining on the outside but rotten on the inside - "Fool's Gold" as pyrite is known.

Happy St. Patrick's Day! Thank you for the reminder of Dan's memorial tomorrow. I just finished reading Julie Obradovic's book and was reminded in reliving recent history of much of what Dan has done for the vaccine/mercury injured and likely many who won't be because of him.

Happy St Patrick’s Day Kim and family all. I never knew how much St Patricks day meant to the Irish until I was working in Paris for 6months,it was mostly Irish I was working with. My Irish work colleagues a few weeks before St Patrick’s Day said “hey! Aberdeen” (Aberdeen was what the Irish called me, I was staying in Aberdeen Scotland at the time) “were hiring a bus for St Patricks day are you coming”? …not sure of what I was letting myself in for I said sure “book me up”! A bus round Paris sounds quite civilised I thought .Well on the day the Bus arrived and 30 of us all piled onto it around 8.30am and it was full of Irish people all dressed in Leprechaun outfits and anything else `Irish,` daffodils with spaces for their heads etc…of course all in green and yellow 6` 6” strapping Irish men dressed as daffodils (only the Irish?) .Needless to say the bus(mobile Irish Bar)was full of Guinness and various other Irish drinks. The bus drove round Paris for about 4 hrs stopping at all the various famous landmarks, but nobody got out –no you see the party was on the bus, and nobody leaves a party in Ireland real bad manners.. As everyone got increasingly drunk around 11am I thought I better ask where we were going or going to end up, the bus driver replied in his French accent “round and round and round Paris until 1pm”.Yep! so that’s what we did singing Irish songs I never knew any Irish songs going on the bus but by the time I got off I felt as if I had been Irish all my life. Then the real St Patricks day party started around the bars of Paris – and then into the next day they watched the Rugby play out -Ireland beat England , the Irish were euphoric … then work the next day. I made it but there were not many Irish around for a few days. St Patrick had a lot to answer for a celebration was certainly had.

Oh Dear Kim, when I was young, where I lived we had a Italian Ice Cream van that used to come around often. The Man was Sam Rossi and I used to tell him "Oh Sam you make the best ice cream in the whole wide world, and I really meant it as well, but when the other kids tried to say the same thing Sam told them to go and get lost [not genuine!] I always ended up with a bigger ice cream cone than the rest in the queue. Dear old Sam Rossi made the best ice cream in the whole wide world even today!
Damned emotion! If I'm right there is a sad farewell tomorrow.
Dear Dan, you would have been very welcome at our house for your High Tea any day of the week
Thinking of your farewell. in celebration, and respect for your achievements.
Runrig-- The Message -Youtube -- A work moving forward!